S2013.1 Team 3
About Us Our team is made up of Leena Hamad, Ashley Pfost and Bastien Russo. Our team has done a lot of researching and brainstorming for a creative new venture. A lot of our ideas in the beginning were clothing items that were JMU related in some way. However, after researching our top two ideas, lacrosse pennies and boxer shorts, we found that either they were not feasible at a reasonable price or after customer discovery saw that students were not as enthusiastic about the item as we hoped. After realizing that these ideas were not going to work, we tried to look in a different direction to create something more creative than JMU apparel. After searching the internet and Pinterest, we came across bracelets that we all really liked. These bracelets have different symbols on them and are made with a suede material. All of the symbols that we want to use have been very popular with womens jewelry recenty so we think these could be a great new venture. The symbols we have chosen include an anchor, arrow, cross, and an infinity symbol. Something that we would like to do is include an inspirational quote or meaning toward what the bracelets symbols mean. For example, the infinity symbol could have a meaning of infinite opportunities and the arrow could be a symbol of taking the right path/direction. With Spring approaching quickly, these bracelets are perfect to wear in warm weather because of the cool colors that we have chosen. We believe these bracelets could do very well and have spoken to many friends about them, who have all showed a very good amount of interest. We are continuing to do customer discovery with creating an online survey and hope to get just as good of feedback from these. Week 1 - 2/4 Our team made mock-ups of our two ideas, the "I love JMU girls" boxer shorts and a "JMU, the promiseland" t-shirt. We posted a survey on all of our Facebook pages to find out if our target market, JMU boys, would be willing to pay for the boxer shorts. 21 people said they would not buy them while 14 people said that they would. This customer discovery was not what we had hoped for so we began to search Pinterest and brainstormed for a more creative venture. Week 2- 2/11 While we were searching for a new idea after the failure of our two first ideas, we found a picture of symbols bracelets on Pinterest that caught our attention. We really liked the idea, and thought we could make our own bracelets. We then started to look for the cheapest raw material prices on the internet. We found interesting prices but the delay was a little too long to enable us to make a first little bet that we could introduce to the class and receive feedback from. So we went to Michaels to buy the minimum material to make a first prototype. The first prototype was made, then introduced to classmates and friends. The Feedbacks we received were really possitive, which was really encouraging. Week 3- 2/18 Our goal on week 3 was to order more supplies from Etsy. We are still waiting on part of the materials that were ordered. The supplier we purchased from was in China for the Chinese New Year, so this delayed the shipment of the items a little longer than we had hoped. While waiting, we went to Michaels and purchased closures for our bracelets. It was a little challenging at the beginning but now the prototypes look a lot better. Another big challenge that our team faced was the first prototype of the wire heart bracelet - the wire was too thin which made it really complicated to work with. After making three prototypes of the wire bracelet, the process became easier and the third bracelet looks a lot better than the first few. We are also continuing to make braided bracelets while we wait for the shipment of charms to be delivered. Week 4- 2/25 This week was a tough one because we are still waiting on the materials for our bracelets to arrive. Although, it is hard to market bracelets that have not been made yet, we have made efforts to get our brand out there. We came up with our company name, Lovely Twists and have created a Facebook page for the company. In order to promote our bracelets, and have our website be seen, we put a promotion for $1 off the first purchase for whoever "likes" our page. We have also ordered labels for the bags that the bracelets will go in. On these labels we describe our product, as well as provide the companys Facebook URL, as displayed below. Week 5- 3/4 We are still waiting for all of the supplies for the bracelets to ship. This process is taking longer than we thought it would however, in the mean time we are continuing to promote Lovely Twists through Facebook and our friends. Ashley and Leena have also visited The Family Christian Store to speak with them about the possibility of displaying our bracelets in their store. Unfortunetly, the owner told us the store is Corporate owned and that process would take too long to try to do. They did however recommend us to try talking to a family owned store in Harrisonburg, called Blessings. We have also received our labels for the bags the bracelets will come in are very happy with the way they look. Week 6- 3/11 Ashley met with Dr. Wales at the beginning of this week to discuss our groups progress. We have also received all of our bracelets materials midweek and have started to make all different types of the bracelets. Some of the materials were hard to work with so we ended up replacing some of the bracelets pieces with easier clasps and jump rings that we bought at Michaels. Week 7- 3/18 We have made about 15 bracelets so far and are continuing to make more this week. We have also set goals for our group to make 20 bracelets by the end of this week and sell atleast 10 of them by Sunday. We are continuing to market our product this week. So far we have sold 8 sets of bracelets. Many of our sales have come from the boys and girls tennis teams, which is a new market we had never thought of before. Our group also visited the Blessing Christian Bookstore to see if they would be interested in selling our bracelets. We have signed a contract with them in which they will be selling 7 of our bracelets in their stores for the price of $11.99 while the owner will pay us $7 per bracelet sold. We have also visited the store Duo downtown and left a message for the owner because she was not working when we visited. Our Facebook page continues to be a great marketing tool, as we have gotten messages from several people wanting to purchase bracelets. Week 8- 3/25 Our group has made good progress this week. We were able to meet with the manager of a clothing store downtown, Duo who has agreed to sell our bracelets in store. We gave 9 bracelets to the manager to sell at the price of $12 and they will be giving us $7 for each bracelet they sell. We set up a little area on the counter with a sign that tells customers "our story" and about why we are selling Lovely Twists. The store had a sorority event the day they started selling them so the manager was excited to get the bracelets in store before the event. We have also continued to make more bracelets and have sold a couple more through our FB page. Our efforts to set up a booth in festival have continued by getting the signatures needed and we hope to have that set up by next week. Week 9- 4/1 We have kept in touch with the manager from Duo and she has sold 5 bracelets so far. We have also dropped off 3 more bracelets that she asked for, because they ran out of a certain charm. This makes a for sure profit of $35 from Duo so far. We have also met with Megan Driver, the event coordinator at JMU to set up a booth in Festival and have scheduled a day and time to do that. We will continue to make more bracelets over the weekend to stock up for our sale in Festival. Week 10- 4/8 We set up a booth in Festival this week on Wednesday. Although, noone bought any bracelets because they didn't have cash with them, we did get good feedback from people. The manager at Duo called tell us all the bracelets we had given her had been sold so we made and dropped off 11 more to her on Thursday. We have also continued to sell bracelets to friends and the tennis teams.